"How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea" open thread.

[seanan_mcguire]

I have been asked to create an open thread for discussion of "How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea." As it has been out for a week now (gasp! so soon!), this seems reasonable to me. So here you go: here is an open thread.

THERE WILL BE SPOILERS.

Seriously. If anyone comments here at all, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. So please don't read and then yell at me because you encountered spoilers. You were warned. (I will not reply to every comment; I call partial comment amnesty. But I may well join some of the discussion, or answer questions or whatnot.) I will be DELETING all comments containing spoilers which have been left on other posts. No one gets to spoil people here without a label.

You can also start a discussion at my website forums, with less need to be concerned that I will see everything you say! In case you wanted, you know, discussion free of authorial influence, since I always wind up getting involved in these things.

Have fun, and try not to bleed on the carpet.

Comments

[smoooom.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to cheer when I saw the happy Kangaroos hoping around deep into the enclosure. All I could think was, so why not humans? If George and Shawn have kids they will be immune right? How awesome is that.

[ironed_orchid]

ZOMBIE KANGAROOS STOLE MY BABY!!!

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

They might, they might not. Remember that Georgia no longer has a reservoir condition (and some reservoir conditions, specifically those linked to the ovaries/testicles, are actively fatal to offspring). So we shall see.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

YES THEY DID.

[shauna hoogland (from livejournal.com)]

As a born and bred Radelaidean I got so excited as I thought I was about to see little old Adelaide post zombie apocalypse, something I can honestly say I never thought to see in any form if media ever! So I must admit to being a leetle disappointed when I realised we were pretty much skipping past Adelaide and going straight to the fence. I got over this pretty quickly once we got to the mob of zombie Roos!

Loved everything about this story, it was entertaining, and unique and it was great to spend some more time with Mahir.

Some of the comments made by the Aussie characters about people coming to Australia resonated quite uncomfortably with me considering our current humanitarian issues with refugees and so called "boat people." Obviously a zombie apocalypse could shake the rights and wrongs of this issue up quite a bit, but it still felt quite uncomfortable hearing the "good" characters baldly stating that they didn't want any more people to come to Australia. I'd be interested to know if this was a purposeful choice in the writing or something I'm bringing to my reading of the story!

You gotta love it when you get bonus social justice commentary along with your zombie wombat.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Sorry we skipped Adelaide so much! Had to get to the fence eventually (and I really piddled about a lot longer on the plane and at the house than I'd expected).

It was an intentional inversion, yeah, and I'm sorry if that didn't come through. I wanted to sort of point out, a bit, that we favor people who can buy their way in over people who really need to be there, socially, and that this would change if money became less important than security and freedom. I also just really wanted to present a non-American, non-European view of the zombie uprising. I do hope I managed.

[umadoshi.livejournal.com]

The whole novella was great, and I love how much fun you clearly had with the zombie kangaroos! You have such a particular knack for conveying sheer geeky delight in things without it taking me out of the story in the slightest. ^_^

Because Georgia is forever-and-always my favorite, I especially loved everything Mahir said about her, which I'd been basically dying for ever since you mentioned on Twitter that he'd be talking about her. There were tears and glee in equal measure. If that's the last we ever get of anyone talking about her in canon, then it's a good way to end.

I won't say my favorite thing he said about her was the story about talking her out of writing an in-depth series on energy drinks, but I laughed and laughed. Oh, Georgia. I love how aware he is of her weaknesses and how much he loves her anyway. He's the best kind of friend.

(IIRC, he never refers to her and Shaun as siblings at all when he's talking or thinking about them? Is it safe to think that's deliberate on his part?)

And just, oh, Mahir. It was lovely to spend so much time in his head, where he's just as dry-witted and delightful as always. Of course he has staff who think chloroforming and kidnapping him is the right thing to do! And all of the new characters were great, with Olivia being especially awesome.

If I'm not careful I'll write a really epic comment, though, so: it was so good to get back into that 'verse, even briefly. Thank you. ^_^

(ZOMBIE KANGAROOS.)

[chinders.livejournal.com]

I am just going to squee about the totally nonchalant mention of the happy poly household. As always, I appreciate you putting various types of diversity in your work like it's no big deal. (Because it's not.)

Also, the biologist in me is fascinated by breastfeeding zombie kangaroos.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Mahir's wordings are very intentionally precise. He was always a little bothered by the sibling act, because they seemed too close for that. He figured out what they'd really been to each other shortly after Georgia died, and began very carefully editing his thinking, because he owed them the consideration of thinking of them as they truly were and had been, not as he'd assumed them to be.

Georgia is my favorite, too. But oh, I love Mahir.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

The biologist in me had a lot of fun figuring the kangaroo ecology out.

[umadoshi.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, good. I figured it had to be intentional, but you know what they say about assumptions... ^^; And thank you for the elaboration, too--I'd actually been curious for a while about when/how exactly he figured out what their relationship really was. It did seem like he knew in Deadline.

...and I just got all teary. Everything about their friendship makes me so happy. It shouldn't feel so rare to see a friendship with that much mutual respect, but it does. I'm glad she had that.

[museclio]

That made me super happy too. It was an awesome.

[yarram.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the story, although I will admit it is not suitable bedtime reading for me. /wry grin/

It's not entirely relevant to the story line, and the answer may possibly be spoilery for future stories, in which case HERE BE SPOILERS is an appropriate reply, but I found myself wondering what happened to the Aborigines living in the bush. Did some of them get end up staying behind the Fence?

[beccastareyes]

I liked that the story showed a place that wasn't America after a world-wide catastrophe, and that not everywhere in the world responded like middle-class Americans did*, and that it worked. It underscored the message of the trilogy nicely, that there is a difference between security to make you safe and security to remind you to be afraid.

I also like the hopeful message with the kangaroos adapting to Kellis-Amberlee, that due to marsupial biology and shorter generations (and being mostly left alone probably helped), they have a leg up, but that their future is possibly humanity's future -- where, yes, zombies are still A Thing, but is not a guaranteed group-killer. And the mixed attitudes towards wildlife versus human development and safety, which seem to echo modern concerns. But with zombies.

* Even in the trilogy, showing that the American poor and those that lived off the grid (intentionally or unintentionally) didn't have the same security culture that the protagonists grew up with (since, even with the Masons making a big deal of being a Normal Family, George and Shaun got used to certain precautions as 'normal' because they could afford security systems and disposable blood tests and so on) was nice.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Yes, some of them did, and they're doing quite well.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

I'm really glad you liked it. :)

[smoooom.livejournal.com]

Sigh, of course, I'm still getting used to the "new" George. Still I assume other couples may have the same potential as the Kangaroos. It would be cool.

[geekhyena.livejournal.com]

I had been waiting eagerly for this ever since you announced it - and it was more wonderful than I could have imagined. The ecology was perfectly thought-out, seeing Mahir again - oh, Mahir, how I missed your wit and perspective on things! Also, seeing a poly triad in fiction meant so much to me - hearkening back to your earlier piece on representation, it is so rare to see poly relationships written in fiction as something that's good for all the participants and as a valid thing. So thank you for doing that. (and my girlfriend keeps quoting that line about mediation, much to my amusement and that of our boyfriend).

Also, re: the zombie wombats being a serious threat - I would bet money that somewhere, Ursula Vernon has read this and is laughing her ass off, with the occasional "I told you so!".

[kohi-no-tora.livejournal.com]

I must say that I have been waiting for this since reading the original trilogy. And I was sold the moment I read the line 'but they forgot that Australia was inhabited by Australians' (there may have been some cackling).

Though I do have some questions that remain unanswered.

1) What meat was in those sausages that Mahir had? Mostly because I was pondering how The Rising would have affected the popularity of emu farming.

2) Speaking as one from more northerly latitudes, how has the rising affected coastal Australia's beach culture?

3) And while it was interesting to see how KA interacted with marsupials compared to placental mammals, that leads to the inevitable next question. What about the monotremes? While platypi and echidnas would never get over the amplification threshold for size reasons (I think), the fact remains that they're the most extreme outliers on the mammal family tree. Egg layers, use the W and Z sex chromosomes like birds and lizards (and have 10 of them!) ets.

[shiyiya.livejournal.com]

I glee'd so hard at the casually poly characters. Yaaaaaaaaay.

[mayir.livejournal.com]

One thing that left me questioning is how the mystery of who was shooting the kangaroos was left open-ended. Suggestion of future plot to come?

[ironed_orchid]

Unless it wss my ex and I am a little bit paranoid.

[ironed_orchid]

As I discovered recently, Pilbara aborigines have stories which warn them about cannibal zombies.

[jammiesest.livejournal.com]

More Mahir always makes me happy, and I loved, loved, loved what he had to say about Georgia to Olivia & Jack. Okay, I loved, loved, loved the whole novella. :D

Some points that remain with me, days after my first read are:

Revenge of the Flight Attendants--they're armed, you're not, suck it up and behave.
Zombie wombats--nooooo, not cute fuzzy wombats!
Joeys! Mahir succumbing to the cute!
ZOMBIE ROOS STOLE MAH BAYBEEEEE!
A perspective from outside the US/Northern Europe world.
And the fact that the roo-shooter remains unknown--life doesn't always have tidy endings.

Thank you again for the wonderful story, Seanan.

[deire.livejournal.com]

I loved Mahir so much more after this story!